Making Loops Musical

Logic Pro arrangement view showing Ethan Lam's vocal loop variations across the track
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Why loops aren’t the problem, and what your students can learn from Ravel, Ethan Lam, and a vocal sample called “Don’t Let Me Down”.

There’s a widely held view among music teachers that using loops in compositions is a shortcut. That it’s lazy. That it doesn’t count as “real” composing. I understand where this comes from, and I’ve probably said similar things myself at various points over the years. But I’ve come to think the issue isn’t loops themselves. It’s repetition without development.

And those are two very different things.

Ravel did it first

Before we talk about EDM, it’s worth remembering that the idea of repeating a musical idea over and over isn’t new. Ravel’s Bolero is built on a rhythmic ostinato, the same snare drum pattern repeated throughout the entire piece for about 15 minutes. On paper, it sounds like it should be unbearably boring. But it isn’t, because Ravel is constantly changing everything around that rhythmic figure: dynamics build from almost nothing to a massive orchestral climax, the texture thickens as new instruments are layered in, melodies are passed between different timbres, and harmonic tension gradually accumulates underneath.

The repeating rhythm is not the weakness of Bolero. It’s the foundation. And it’s the same principle that makes loops work in electronic music.

What a loop actually does in a composition

In EDM, a loop can serve the same purpose as a melodic hook in a pop song. It gives the listener’s ear something to latch onto. It provides structural stability and a sense of familiarity that holds the track together.

This is actually a really important point, because many students who compose electronically struggle with melody. They can build solid drum patterns and basslines, they can design interesting synth textures, but producing a strong melodic idea is often the toughest part. Their tracks end up sounding like backing tracks: rhythmically and harmonically solid, but missing that key element that makes a piece feel complete. A well-chosen loop can fill this gap, giving the track a focal point that ties everything else together.

The problem comes when students drop a loop in and leave it untouched for three minutes. That is repetitive. But the solution isn’t to ban loops. It’s to teach students how to develop them.

How to make a loop interesting

There are many production techniques students can use to transform a loop so that it stays engaging throughout a track. These are the same techniques professional producers use every day.

Slicing and chopping is one of the most effective. Rather than playing the full loop every time, students can cut it up rhythmically, triggering fragments of the loop at different points to create variation. This keeps the familiar sound but disrupts the predictability.

Pitch shifting the loop, or parts of it, introduces changes in melodic contour. Even subtle shifts up or down can make repeated material feel like it’s going somewhere new.

Effects processing opens up a huge range of possibilities. Applying delay or reverb at different points creates a sense of space and movement. EQ filter sweeps, where you gradually open or close a filter across the frequency spectrum, produce timbral changes that keep the ear engaged even when the underlying notes haven’t changed. This is one of the most powerful tools in electronic production and something students can learn to use very quickly.

Arrangement matters too. Just as Ravel changes what’s happening around his rhythmic ostinato, students can vary the instrumentation, dynamics and texture surrounding the loop. Stripping everything back to just the loop and a simple beat, then gradually building other elements back in, creates contrast and momentum.

A student who gets it right

One of my Year 13 students, Ethan Lam, has produced a track that is one of the best examples I’ve seen from a New Zealand high school student of how to use loops effectively. Have a listen:

tinyurl.com/EthanLoopComp

As you listen, try counting the number of times you hear the “Don’t Let Me Down” vocal loop, or a variation of it. I haven’t counted precisely, but I think it’s well over a hundred.

And yet, does the track sound too repetitive? Some may say yes, but I believe most listeners will say no. Keeping in mind that Ethan is still a high school student and not a professional music producer (yet!), I think this is a remarkable piece of work.

30 seconds in – the initial ‘exposition’ and ‘development’ of the vocal loop.

It’s worth diving into what makes this so successful. This track, like many EDM tracks, doesn’t have a melody in the traditional sense. There’s no series of lyrics to sing along with (apart from the loop itself), no use of sequence or extensive melodic decoration. But I’d argue that Ethan’s use of the loop fulfils exactly the same purpose as a traditional melody. It gives the ear a hook to focus on and provides structural stability. Without it, the track would sound like what so many school compositions in this genre end up being: a backing track of solid rhythmic and bass ideas, but lacking that essential focal point.

What sets Ethan apart from students who have given loops a bad name is the sheer variety of ways he alters the loop. You get a sense of structural certainty from the repetition, but alongside that repetition there is constant development: rhythmic slicing, heavy use of delay and reverb, EQ filter sweeps that create timbral change, and pitch shifting that introduces genuine melodic variation.

1:12 into the track shows a low pass filter rising up to create timbral contrast.

If you look at the screenshot of his Logic Pro session, you can see many of these techniques in action through how he’s edited and arranged the loop using the tools in his DAW. But I’d encourage you to do a really close listen to the track and list all the ways he has altered the loop to keep listeners engaged.

A close-up of the arrangement showing how Ethan has chopped and sliced the loop into smaller fragments.

And while you’re digging into the detail of his techniques, don’t forget to step back and look at the big picture. Everything Ethan does with the loop serves a larger purpose: making sure the track takes us on a musical journey. He’s teaching us something about art and music. He didn’t create this piece for NCEA credits. He created it to inspire listeners and connect with them.

The unaltered loop would not have achieved this. It would have become boring and predictable. Every good musical idea can turn into a bad one if it’s repeated without development, but Ethan manages to find a really effective balance.

Teaching loops well

So rather than telling students they can’t use loops, I’d encourage us to teach them how to use loops. The techniques I’ve described above, slicing, pitch shifting, effects processing, and thoughtful arrangement, are all practical skills that can be taught in a DAW. They are the same skills that apply to developing any musical idea, whether it comes from a loop library or from a student’s own imagination.

If you’re looking for structured resources to help teach EDM composition in your classroom, including how to use these production techniques, I’ve developed a 40-lesson curriculum called How to Compose… EDM. Each lesson comes with a teacher guide, a student handout, and a video tutorial I’ve created demonstrating and explaining the key concepts. The videos mean you don’t need to be an expert before you start, and they cover everything from drum programming and synthesis through to arrangement and mixing. You can find it at www.learningideas.org.

The Anatomy of an EDM Track: A Guide for Music Teachers

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If you trained as a classical or jazz musician, chances are nobody ever taught you what a “drop” is. Or a “build”. Or why a four-on-the-floor kick pattern is the heartbeat of almost every dance track your students are listening to right now.

I had to learn all of this from scratch. And what I discovered is that EDM has a clear, teachable structure that is just as logical as sonata form or 12-bar blues. It’s just that most of us never learned it. So here’s a quick primer on how EDM tracks are put together, what the terminology means, and what tools you and your students can use to start creating it.

The building blocks of an EDM track

Most EDM tracks are built around a cycle of tension and release. Where a classical piece might use harmonic tension to drive forward motion, EDM does it through texture, rhythm and energy. There are four key structural elements that almost every track shares.

The intro sets the mood. It’s usually stripped back, with just a few elements, perhaps a simple kick drum pattern or a filtered synth pad. DJs need this section to mix tracks together, which is why extended mixes often have a longer, more percussive intro than the radio edit.

The build-up is where the tension starts to climb. You’ll hear elements being added, a rising pitch effect, snare rolls getting faster, maybe a vocal sample being chopped and filtered. The whole point is to create anticipation. Students pick up on this instinctively because it’s the moment in a track where they know something big is coming.

Then comes the drop. This is the payoff, the moment all that tension is released. The full beat kicks in, the bass hits hard, and the main melodic or rhythmic hook arrives. In genres like dubstep the drop can be aggressive and heavy, with distorted “wobble” bass sounds. In house music it might be more subtle, with a driving groove and a catchy synth melody. Either way, the drop is the centrepiece of the track.

Finally, the breakdown strips everything back again. The drums often drop out entirely, leaving atmospheric pads or a vocal. It’s a moment of contrast, giving the listener space to breathe before the next build-up and drop. This contrast between loud and quiet, busy and sparse, is what gives EDM its emotional power.

What’s great about this structure from a teaching perspective is that students can hear it immediately. Play them the first two minutes of almost any EDM track and ask them to identify the intro, the build, and the drop. They’ll get it within one or two listens. Try doing that with sonata-allegro form.

The four-on-the-floor

If there’s one concept that underpins almost all EDM, it’s the four-on-the-floor kick drum pattern. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a kick drum hitting on every beat of a 4/4 bar. Beats 1, 2, 3 and 4. Every bar. This constant pulse is what makes the music feel relentless and danceable.

On top of that, you add a snare or clap on beats 2 and 4 (the backbeat), and hi-hats playing 8th or 16th notes to add energy and movement. That’s essentially the foundation of every house, trance and techno track ever made. You can demonstrate this to a class in about 30 seconds by playing the opening of Daft Punk’s “Around the World” or Calvin Harris’s “Feel So Close” and asking students to tap along.

Once students understand this pattern, they can programme it themselves in a DAW within a few minutes. It’s an incredibly satisfying entry point because it sounds “real” almost immediately.

What tools do you need?

This is one of the best things about teaching EDM. You don’t need an orchestra, a set of ukuleles, or even a recording studio. All you need is a computer with a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and ideally a simple MIDI keyboard per student.

For DAWs, there are several options that work well in schools. Soundtrap is browser-based, which means no installation headaches and it works on Chromebooks. Reaper has an incredibly generous free trial and is a full professional DAW. Ableton Live Intro is free with many MIDI keyboards and is the industry standard for electronic music. And of course, if your school is in the Apple ecosystem, GarageBand and Logic Pro are excellent options.

MIDI keyboards are important because they allow students to play and record virtual instruments in real time. You can pick up basic 25-key controllers very affordably, and they make a massive difference to the hands-on feel of the course compared to clicking notes in with a mouse.

Beyond the hardware, the real tools are the virtual instruments built into these DAWs: synthesisers for creating electronic sounds, drum machines for programming beats, and effects like reverb and EQ for shaping and mixing. Students learn to use these just as they would learn to use any other instrument.

A resource to help

If this all sounds interesting but slightly overwhelming, I’ve been there. That’s exactly why I created How to Compose… EDM, a 40-lesson curriculum that takes you and your students through all of this step by step. It starts right at the beginning with active listening and identifying these structural elements, then progressively builds through drum programming, synthesis, bassline creation, arrangement and mixing across four phases.

Each lesson comes with a teacher guide, a student handout, and a video tutorial I’ve created demonstrating and explaining the key concepts. The videos mean you don’t have to be an EDM expert before you start. You and your students can learn together, which in my experience is actually one of the most powerful things about teaching this kind of material.

You can find the resource at www.learningideas.org. I’d love to hear from any teachers who give it a go.

Producing “Stairway to Heaven”

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The Prizegiving finale for St Andrew’s College in 2023 was a musical performance of “Stairway to Heaven”. While we often video and record our Prizegivings, this is the first time we recorded the audio properly. We are glad we did as the video has since had over 1.4 million views across our school social media channels.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

I’ve had many people contact me to ask how we went about producing that performance so I thought I’d describe the process in case other schools would like to do something similar.

Choosing the song

We have been producing a big musical finale for our Prizegivings for 10 years. Other songs we have done in the past are “You Raise Me Up”, “This Is Me”, “Songs for a New World” and “Time of your Life (Good Riddance)”. I usually choose a song that plays into the strengths of any particular year 13 group.

The 2023 year 13’s were group that was very strong in Rock performance, so we really had to go for something big and loud for them to fill the Wolfbrook Arena where we hold our Prizegivings.

I had initially thought of doing some Queen, but the YouTube video of “Heart” performing “Stairway To Heaven” at the Kennedy Center Honours concert was passed on to me by our Board chair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cZ_EFAmj08), and I couldn’t stop listening to it.

I did have push back as the words in “Stairway To Heaven” are not at all appropriate for a Prizegiving or Graduation, but the arrangement and performance in that video had the ‘x-factor’ which I knew people would love. And I never really listen to lyrics anyway, so it didn’t matter to me.

Planning

The Heart arrangement worked great structurally, but I wanted to involve our whole school orchestra, choirs, as well as feature some of our rock musicians. I am very fortunate to have an ex-student who is one of my piano tutors at StAC who is always very happy to knock out arrangements very much at ‘mates rates’. Without William Ernest and his generosity this probably would never have happened (there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to have done the arrangement).

William chatted to me about the various strengths (and weaknesses) of the orchestra and wrote parts out accordingly.

The choral arrangement is very simple, mostly just in two-part so it was very achievable for our choirs.

I knew we had some stunning guitarists in the school. But Mia was something extra special. She only started learning guitar in year 9, but due to her love of music and high levels of motivation she progressed very quickly to become one of our best guitarists by year 12, winning a best musician award at the Rockquest regional finals. I knew she had to take the solo, not because she’s a girl, but because she’s awesome. (But the fact that she’s a girl and on stage shredding is probably the main reason why the video has been so popular – I have heard from many female musicians who have fought against prejudice and poor attitudes in the music industry who have found her having the spotlight very inspiring).

The key point here though, if I didn’t have the guitarists, we couldn’t have done this, and we would have needed to choose a different piece. It’s a lesson I keep having to relearn as a band director… don’t choose material that’s too hard for your band just because you love the song or the arrangement.

Luckily for us, the arrangement, and the musicians available matched perfectly.

Rehearsals

There isn’t much to say here. The orchestra rehearsed their parts for 4-5 rehearsals, the choir learned their parts in a couple of rehearsals and I met with the rock musicians to make sure they had gone away and learned their parts. We brought all the various groups together for the first time three days before Prizegiving and because everyone knew what was expected of them (as a result of clear and repetitive messages from me), it came together very easily.

Technical production 

One aspect I’m most proud of is the staging. The ‘cheorography’ (if you can call it that) was done by me, as none of our usual staff were available to help. But this only looked good because of the amazing light show. 

As we have Prizegiving in a large venue we always have to engage a professional lighting company (with students assisting). This is the first time for a Prizegiving I contacted them six months in advance and talked through some ideas with them. Once again, this was done at ‘mate’s rates’ by The Light Site. Sean Hawkins clearly had a passion to support us in his design, and he designed a light show with over 70 cues for the song.  The moment Mia steps forward to play the solo is made even more impactful as all the lights dim in the rest of the room placing the sole focus on her.

This also had the extra benefit of allowing us to sneak the larger choir on stage for a big reveal in the final stanza. In the Heart video it’s done with the choir behind a curtain that is raised, but with the size of our stage that was impossible. Sean’s solutions worked great and added to the arrangement by having many moments where the intensity was increased.

Recording, editing and mixing

While we video all our Prizegivings, we usually just take the audio feed from the FOH desk and put that to video. It usually sounds terrible (as you can see from previous performances on our YouTube channel).  This year I plugged my laptop into the venue sound desk literally 15 minutes before Prizegiving started so we could record all the audio separately for mixing later. For those that care… I installed Dante Virtual Sound card and plugged into the sound desk via ethernet so that we could record more than the 32 channels that is all a USB connection can typically handle. Luckily the sound mixer did all this for me at very short notice.

After Prizegiving I spent a few hours mixing the 100 or so channels back at school in Logic Pro and did a pretty rough job that I regret not putting more time into with the video having proven so popular.

Unfortunately, all the wide-angle video shots got lost when they were all put on a hard drive that became corrupted.  All we were left with were close ups that weren’t particularly well put together. Therefore, I put a plea out to parents to upload any of their phone footage to a Dropbox folder. These were then edited into place by our school film and TV teacher Paul Sparkes to produce something that looked pretty good in the end.

The Aftermath

One of my guitar teachers said this performance would get a million views in the days leading up to Prizegiving. I thought he was nuts. It has been such a massive surprise to me this has turned out so popular. It has proven to be a very special time in my life, and especially in the lives of the wonderful ākonga who feel very chuffed to have been part of this.

Interviews on live TV, radio, with the BBC World Service, all added an extra week or two of work at the end of the year. But we didn’t mind it. We very much enjoyed our ’15 minutes of fame’. 

If you haven’t seen the video yet, just search it up on YouTube, it’ll appear near the top of your results page.

NCEA 1.1 Cheat Sheet

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Guidelines for getting going with teaching and assessing the “Beats Recreation” task for NCEA 1.1 – “Use Music Skills in a Music Style”.

For me, one of the most exciting aspects of the new NCEA is the freedom to teach a variety of music skills that are being closely dictated by the requirements of assessment. While every teacher probably claims that they teach to the curriculum and not the assessment, I think the evidence of how often we consult NCEA guidelines as opposed to the NZC would beg to differ (and I count myself firmly in this category).

A good example is the new NCEA 1.1 which has the incredibly broad and non-specific title “Use Music Skills in a Music Style”. Music skills could be anything to do with preparing for a performance, developing compositional skills, using music technology recording platforms, ear training, improvisation, interpreting a score… the list goes on.

While I believe this could be a bit of a nightmare for moderators comparing school to school, or even student to student within a school if they’re focusing on different skills, the great news for teachers is that we can create a course for ākonga that is engaging and should hopefully see more self-motivated students.

NZQA have developed a very interesting task for this Achievement Standard called “Beats Recreation”. For this assessment students need to recreate a professional music track (minus the vocals). This is great for modern pop and electronic genres and will teach students a huge amount about music production, which will feed into their own original compositions.

Students should be:

  • Transcribing melodies, chord progressions and drum patterns
  • Reproducing the timbre or tone qualities of synths and instruments using virtual instruments and effects such as EQ and reverb
  • Operating a DAW such as Soundtrap, GarageBand, Logic Pro or Ableton (or other DAWs) to record and mix the track
  • And most importantly… describing the music skills they have developed.

I will be producing a ‘flipped classroom’ resource that will go through these stages in depth (to be released term 4 this year all going well) but here are some great resources to get you going.

What songs should they use?

Anything the students love. I firmly believe that the class should not all be doing the same song decided by the teacher. The more ākonga feel like they have agency in the decision the more motivated they will be, and the more transferrable the skills will be to their own compositions. However, this means they might choose something too difficult. In that case I am going to guide my students towards tracks from Pure Heroine by Lorde. While this album might be 10 years old, the stripped-down nature of the tracks, with their thin texture, means there are less elements to reproduce, making this more accessible for year 11 students.

Also, it’s less likely that students will find descriptions on the internet of the chord progressions, melodies, and the music production/mixing techniques like they might for a Taylor Swift track.

Aural transcription

For me, this is the most problematic aspect of this “Beats Recreation” task. I have no issue with students using tools like Moises or the Hooktheory website to find the chord progressions for their songs. If students are demonstrating enough development and use of ‘music skills’ through their recreation (particularly the timbral recreation of sounds, which for me is the toughest aspect of this task) then I’m not sure we should be pushing students to transcribe all the chord progressions. Particularly as all we’ve expected of level 1 students so far has been chords I, IV, V and vi in the major key and in root position. It would be a shame to limit the songs that students can use to just those chords.

Therefore, I think we should be allowing students to use an app such as Moises to work out the chords. If you haven’t looked at Moises yet I encourage you to download the free trial and see how great it is.

However, something I’ll delve more into with my resource is building a ‘toolkit’ of the top 10 most common chord progressions, drum patterns and common synth sounds which you can use to develop student’s aural skills. Learning about these through a scaffolded approach will then make it easier for students to recognise and transcribe what they hear in commercial tracks.

Recreation

There are some great models on YouTube already that show how to recreate a commercial track. Look up the YouTube channels from 93 Acres and Swick’s Classroom and you’ll see how you can use software such as Logic, Ableton and Soundtrap to reproduce a song. However, these often just show how they did it, without the background of why they made their decisions. For example, they’ll show a mixing decision, or a synth preset, and not describe how they decided on those sounds. This is where the teaching will come in.

A big part of this process will be students learning how to:

  • Create a session and tracks in a DAW
  • Connect MIDI controllers and audio interfaces
  • Use the piano roll and step sequencers in the DAW to input and edit MIDI data
  • Use virtual instruments such as synths and samplers
  • Use EQ and reverb to a basic level (for level 1 I don’t believe it’s realistic to expect students to be using other ‘mix’ tools such as compression, mix busses, and other tools)

A note… if the song that students are using is in a tricky key (such as Ab), then use the transpose feature in your DAW to put it to a close key that is easier (such as G). This will make it easier to teach the ‘theory’ of major scales and harmony.

Tools

As I mentioned above, the Moises app and the Hooktheory website are some of the best tools to figure out the chord progressions of songs. However, Moises is also particularly useful in that it splits out a song to separate tracks for drums, bass, keys, guitars, vocals and ‘other’. This means ākonga can solo just one instrument when they’re trying to work it out. This will make it easier for them to reproduce a drum beat, bassline or melody, but I think it’s especially useful for recreating a synth sound or hearing a mix technique such as reverb.

I use Moises to create these ‘multitrack’ files, which ākonga can then import into their DAW to start the recreation process.

Another tool I love is Syntorial. With this training programme students can learn to aurally identify synth sounds and recreate them in a very easy to understand and scaffolded approach. While it’s primarily an ear training course, it’s how I’ve done most of my learning about the different modules in a synth, and synth signal flow. I’ve been using the free version with my students for years and the ‘unlocked’ lessons have been all they’ve needed. However, if you find it useful for your school, I encourage you to support the developers and purchase a copy.

Students can also learn a lot about synths from the website learningsynths.ableton.com. The ‘playground’ aspect of this is great and makes what the different parts of a synth do so easy to understand.

A whole new world

I am so excited to be doing this work with students next year. While I have done bits of this with students in the past, it’s always been hard to find time to fit it into the school year and go deep with it due to the requirements of NCEA and preparing students for assessments. And by doing this task in term 1, it will set students up with a huge amount of knowledge and skills which will feed into their own music production and composition.

Please keep an eye out for the new resource I’m developing for this. It will be designed so that students can complete everything using free or cheap software and will largely be ‘flipped classroom’ so that kaiako don’t feel like they must learn everything before they can start allowing their ākonga to work in this field. For more information, please visit www.learningideas.org

Ear Training for “tech” kids

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I have to start with an apology for this ‘click-baity’ title. As much as possible I don’t try to differentiate my students between those that are ‘techy’ and those that are not. Or even worse… the tech vs classical kids. I truly believe that incorporating a variety of tools such as recording software, MIDI sequencing, sample libraries, etc can be useful for ALL students, no matter the genre they want to specialise in.

That being said, in our current (and soon to disappear) high school assessment system the students that have not been strong music notation readers have been at a massive disadvantage and have not adequately had their aural skills improved. The dwindling numbers of students sitting the level 1-3 aural exams demonstrates that teachers are not seeing the point in getting students to sit the exam if reading music is not part of their daily practice as musicians. The orchestra or jazz band kid has a massive advantage over the singer/songwriter or rock kid who is too busy reciting “Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit” in their head while trying to work out the direction of a melody.

So, what should we be doing for those students who are not the ‘notation reading’ students? Here are a few tools that you might find useful to help students develop their ear in identifying pitches, tone and timbre.

Syntorial – https://www.syntorial.com

This is a great tool which teaches you about synthesis. It breaks down all the parts of a synthesizer and shows you how they generate and manipulate sound bit by bit. But the clever part of this training programme is that after it introduces a new part of a synth, it tests you on how to use it in an ear test where you must match the given sound with sounds that you manipulate.

So not only are students learning how a synthesizer works (which means this is fantastic for doing Level 3 Unit Standard 32304 – Operate a Music Sequencing Application) they are also making their ear more sensitive to changes in timbre (after all, timbre is a musical element just as important as melody, harmony, or rhythm… isn’t it?).

This obviously has great benefits for students who are composing in genres that use synthesisers (which is pretty much all modern ‘commercial’ related genres) but I also find this great for students completing Achievement Standard 91422 – Analyse a Substantial Music Work. I don’t have all the class study the same set work, instead they choose their own works to study. For those analysing something in a modern genre it is a requirement for them to recreate the sounds, which means finding ways to recreate the synth sounds using the software instruments available in our DAW’s such as GarageBand and Logic Pro. Syntorial, is a fantastic tool for helping them understand how to adjust the parameters of a synth to match the sounds from the recordings their analysing. And it helps them to do it all by ear.

Syntorial does cost money, but the first 40 or so lessons are free, which is all I’ve ever used with my students.

Quiztones – https://theproaudiofiles.com/quiztones/

There are a few apps available for iOS, Android and Mac/PC but this is my favourite. When trying to mix a song we try and blend the tone of various instruments to make sure we don’t get a build-up of too many frequencies making something sound ‘boxy’, or ‘muddy’, or ‘harsh’ or ‘sibilant’. The ability to quickly recognise those frequencies, assign a number to them (such as a ‘honking’ sound being between 500-1000 Hz) and then pull those frequencies out with an EQ is an essential skill for a good sound mixer (or basically anyone who is composing and producing their own music).

Ten minutes a day with Quiztones and students will be amazed at how quickly their ear skills improve making them more aware of which instruments sound good together and those that aren’t.

Soundgym – https://www.soundgym.co/

For the student that is serious about becoming a sound engineer probably my favourite tool is this website. It’s not cheap, but the variety of tools you can use to help learn how to be better at EQ’ing, hearing compression, identifying balance and panning issues, etc is brilliant. The daily workout takes around 10 minutes and is basically all you need to do over a period of time to develop ‘golden ears’ for sound mixing.

A popular alternative that is worth looking into (but I haven’t used personally) is https://www.trainyourears.com

As we go through the changes for a new assessment system and we ‘reinvent’ how we teach and assess aural skills, these tools may be of great assistance to high school teachers and may be more engaging for some students than the ‘traditional’ methods.

32-bit recording

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It is rare that in a particular year there is a huge standout product or piece of music technology equipment. While everything is always getting better and cheaper, often it is gradual improvements to things like recording software or microphones which make the life of a recording musician and composer easier in some way.

However, last year a new audio recorder came out that is particularly worth of mention. The Zoom F6.

Firstly, the basics: the Zoom F6 has six microphone inputs allowing you to record pretty much any kind of small ensemble. It is incredibly small (seriously, it’s much smaller than you would think by looking at pictures of it online). It records to SD card so if you are recording somewhere like the Big Sing, Rockquest or Chamber Music competition you can do recordings without having to also lug around a laptop.

However, what makes this portable audio stand out from the many other portable audio recorders on the market (and there are a lot of them) is the fact that it can record 32-bit floating point audio files. Why is this important? Well, in short, it means that you never have to worry about correctly setting the input or gain levels. It is physically impossible to record too quiet or too loud.

For anyone that has any experience with recording you’ll know that if you set the levels too high on your recording interface then you’ll get clipping or distortion. Working with student bands a common problem is setting your recording levels during their sound check or practice, but when it comes to the actual performance or recording they all of a sudden play twice as loud, distorting your audio signals.

This is no longer a problem with 32-bit audio recording. Here is a great example of someone demonstrating this with the smaller Zoom F3:

In the past we used to always record digital audio at 16-bit quality. This gave us a dynamic range of 96 dB. 24-bit audio quality gives us a dynamic range of 144 dB which is a massive improvement. However, with both of these formats we can never record over 0 dBFS, which is the clipping point. With 32-bit audio though, we have a dynamic range of 1528 dB, including the ability to go a massive 770 dB above 0 dBFS. The greatest difference in sound pressure level on Earth is only around 210 dB! See here for all the math.

I can’t really underestimate what a big deal this if for field recording. In the past while recording students performing outside, or even in situations where I’m recording tutorials in my classroom, there have been times that the input signal controls have accidentally been knocked making my tracks way too loud and distorted and ruining what we were trying to record (and often I only realise that after everyone has packed up and gone home and I’m sitting down to mix!). With 32-bit recorders this is no longer a concern.

To see the Zoom F6 in action here is a recording we made of some students performing at the top of the Port Hills at sunrise:

In this setup I had two microphones setup in a stereo ORTF arrangement, three microphones used as close mics spread out across the performers and the sixth input dedicated for the guitar DI box. The audio levels were all over the place at the time of recording but using the ‘sort of free’ recording software Reaper I was able to balance everything up nicely.

The microphones suffered terribly from wind noise so I had to use the excellent Izotope RX software to clean the tracks up.

So, if you do a lot of recording in different spaces, then I highly recommend you trial one of these units from your local music store.

Collaborative Composition between primary and secondary students

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I want students to develop a love of learning, music and creation. Not just to bank NCEA credits. Therefore I deliberately get them to do tasks that are not assessed. They are pushed hard to focus on NCEA assessment in all their other subjects so they are very much in the habit of focusing on the results, and not the process.

My year 12 music students completed their two songs/compositions as required by NCEA by the end of term 2. As I did not want to stop creativity in my class just because we’d met the requirements for NCEA I decided to get them to do group compositions, but with a twist.

I got them to go to the year 3 class at St Andrew’s College and interview the students about their native birds inquiry. The year 3’s were in the process of discovering everything they could about New Zealand native birds (alive or extinct). They were learning about the their size, their habitat, their sounds and what are their main threats.

I divided my class of 14 students into four groups and put them with a group of year 3’s for half an hour. They laughed, sang and had a great time together. My students recorded the interviews on their phone, took pictures of the student artwork and generally gathered a lot of raw material with which they could go away and start writing songs about.

Task overview

I designed a simple overview for my students to help them with structuring their time which you can see here.

In each of the year 12 groups I made sure that there was someone in each group who had strengths in the following areas:

  • Lyric writing
  • Chord construction
  • Beat making/production

Throughout year 11 and 12 my students have all developed a solid understanding of:

  • Song structure
  • Using Logic or FL Studio for recording and beat making
  • What a melody should be like in verses and choruses
  • How to develop vocal harmonies
  • Chord construction
  • Developing instrumental hooks and counter melodies

Of course, all the students are stronger in some areas than others, but within the groups all the bases were covered. As my students have already written at least 4-5 songs/compositions they didn’t need to learn about the process. My job was to make sure they were staying focused, not spending too long on little things, and to help resolve conflict through questioning around their overall purpose.

Unfortunately due the COVID lockdown in term 3 I was not able to spend any time with the students analysing kids songs in general to help them understand the challenges writing for a young audience. My original intention was for my students to write songs that could be sung by the year 3’s in class. But with the loss of class time I decided to just let the students go for it and write the songs in any style they feel comfortable with.

All the groups worked well together for the most part but there were certainly times of tension and personality clashes. Which is great! I was hoping that would happen. The students were able to work through their issues and complete the job in spite of how difficult it was for them at times. This is the nature of collaboration! They learned that you may sometimes disagree, but you need to come up with a solution that meets the brief and deliver on time. And they did. I’m sure all teachers will see how many of the Key Competencies are being displayed through this process.

Here are the four songs that my students wrote. You are welcome to download them and share them with your classes.

Technology required to make this happen

St Andrew’s College is a BYOD school but when I have student collaborating I don’t allow them to use their own laptops for the main project file in case one of them is away sick or on a school trip. Therefore I use music department desktop and laptop computers.

Each computer is loaded with Apple’s Logic Pro and all the computers are sync’ed together with shared Dropbox folders. This ensures all their work is automatically backed up to the ‘cloud’ and I am always able to access their projects from my laptop. Halfway through the process we have a class review of each other’s projects and being able to access all their files from my laptop makes this a whole lot easier.

The students were set up in our studio, my office, my classroom and a practise room. Each group with an audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett Solo), a microphone (Shure SM58), headphones/speakers and a small MIDI keyboard (Novation Launchkey).

In each group the student who had strength with ‘beat making’ would have their own laptop to make the beat while the others are lyric writing, recording guitar/keys, etc. The ‘beat maker’ would construct the beat in sections and then import it to the main project computer once they were ready. This ensured people weren’t sitting around doing nothing.

Outcome

Coming out of lockdown this was the best thing possible for my class. Students had just spent several weeks not interacting with real people, and doing mostly theory and research work online. I got the impression from some students that in some other subjects they were in a sense of panic about having to get through material for our upcoming Prelim exams. Students were really feeling the stress.

But by doing this collaborative and creative work students were really happy and calm. Once again music became their ‘safe place’ in the school day as they could relax and enjoy working with others. And ironically, I would assert they ended up with much high levels of learning and productivity than in any of their other classes who were rushing to get ready for exams.

In reflecting upon the process the students were all surprised at what they had achieved. They all knew there were things they would do differently and better next time, but they had a deep sense of satisfaction in producing such high quality tracks in such a short time period. They all recognised the benefits of collaborative composition and as we head into level 3 Songwriting and Composition they have a wonderful skill set and understanding of the compositional process that will serve them well.

The Best Free Recording and Mixing Software

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As I write this New Zealand has been plunged into another mini lockdown. Auckland schools are closed for seven days, and the rest of the country is back to gatherings of no more than 100 people. While these lockdowns are frustrating, I believe most New Zealanders are willing to go through these short and sharp periods of inconvenience as it has shown to be effective at stamping out the virus in the community. I think 25,000+ people at the recent music festival “Electric Avenue” will attest to that. What other country is able to hold summer music festivals in 2021?

But because we have these times of uncertainty hanging over us, teachers and students are needing to find ways of continuing their learning and skill development without the resources of their music departments. During the nationwide level 3 and 4 lockdown in 2020 I found the following software to be really great at enabling students to continue composing and mixing from home. Everything listed below is free to download and works on Windows and Mac computers. Chromebooks are not an option for audio recording and mixing beyond the basic websites like Soundtrap and Bandlab. Just like you can’t edit video properly through a website, you can’t do higher end audio recording and mixing through the options available on Chromebooks.

In addition to the options below please see my recent blogs on free Orchestral sound libraries and free composition software.

DAW

I wish that Pro Tools First, the free version of the industry standard recording software was good, but it just seems so buggy and unreliable. And, just like they did with good old Pro Tools Free for Windows 98, AVID seem to have stopped providing any updates for it. Instead, the best option for a professional level recording platform is Reaper.

Reaper isn’t strictly free, but it has a fully functioning evaluation period, that never expires! So, if you try it and like it, I do encourage you to purchase an education licence (for a very small price) as I have. Reaper is generally considered to be a top tier Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) just like Logic, Cubase, Pro Tools, Studio One and Reason. It is well supported by a very enthusiastic community and excellent tutorials on their own website. Students and teachers really can learn everything they need to know about it from YouTube.

Mixing plugins

All of the audio mixing plugins, such as EQs, compressors, delay and reverb that come with Reaper are all very good. But to be honest, they’re not very pretty and inspiring to work with. Instead here are some great options of mixing plugins that work inside Reaper once you’ve installed them on your computer.

TDR Slick EQ – while this may not be a fully parametric EQ, it sounds great and is easy to use. And when students are new to mixing, ease of use if the most important thing.

TDR Nova – this is a dynamic EQ, so might be a bit beyond the beginner user, but it looks amazing and sounds even better. It’s free so why not download it and give it a try?

TDR Kotelnikov Compressor – this is a beautiful sounding compressor which looks great as well.

Klanghelm MJUC Jr compressor – if the Kotelnikov is intimidating to use, here is a much simpler compressor to start working with. This is modelling on the classic LA2A style of compression where you only have two or three controls. These can be especially useful on evening out the dynamic changes in a vocal performance.

Valhalla Supermassive Delay – it’s amazing that this is free. Valhalla make some of the best reverbs and delays so it is wonderful they have released this excellent delay.

TAL Reverbs – Finding a good reverb is a bit tougher. The Valhalla Supermassive could act as a reverb in a pinch but really it might be worth investing in the Valhalla Reverb. I’d start with the Vintage Verb which is excellent and very reasonably priced. However for free options TAL offer a few different reverbs and I recommend getting them all. To start with go for TAL – Reverb 4.


Saturation and distortion – when recording on purely digital systems it can be harder making your tracks ‘glue’ together in a balanced way when compared to mixing on old analog systems using tape. Something that can really help make your mixes sound warmer and work well together is to provide very subtle distortion, known as saturation. This is what naturally happens when you increase the gain or input on an analog mixing console, and when you record onto tape. We can emulate this in the digital realm using saturation plugins. There are many excellent options now, but an excellent free one is the Klanghelm IVGI. A word of warning, don’t over do this! If you hear a big noticeable difference when you put this on a track and raise it’s levels then you’ve probably used too much. Put it on each of your tracks but in barely perceptible amounts. The combination of putting this on 12 or more tracks in you mix will have the overall effect of making everything ‘fit’ a bit better, and sound warmer.

If you want to explore other options for free effects and software instruments Landr have put together a great blog which is well worth reading. However, at over 200 options it’s a little overwhelming. What I’ve listed above has worked well for me and my students.

Free Orchestral Sample Library from Spitfire Audio

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I have spent a lot of time trying to find free composition and mixing software for my students. While audio software has never been cheaper (Logic Pro is only around $250 which is a bargain considering I paid over $1000 for it when I first got it… and even then it was worth every cent), I am constantly trying to find good options for students that don’t cost anything.

Earlier in the year I wrote about free composition software highlighting free orchestral sounds from Project Sam, the Spitfire Labs, Waveform by Tracktion and Native Instruments Kontakt Start. These are all excellent solutions for composing on a laptop. But Spitfire have now just released what is probably one of the most amazing deals I’ve ever seen for composition software.

Last year they released their excellent BBC Symphony Orchestra sample library. It was quickly becoming one of the ‘go to’ sample libraries for orchestral music composers. However, it’s price is likely out of the range of high schools and students. So it’s quite exciting that a few weeks ago Spitfire released a version of this for only $49 USD, or you can get it for free if you fill out a survey for them and are prepared to wait two weeks for a download code.

I am able to afford the $49, so I went ahead and got the new “BBC Discover” immediately. Here are my first impressions.

This sample library sounds great! The sounds are the same sounds as found in the more expensive BBCSO Core and Professional library. But you have far fewer articulations, mic positions and general adaptability. Are you going to use these sounds for a professional film score? Short answer, no. But for high school students trying to make film style orchestrations and compositions, it is perfect. In fact, it’s probably better than the expensive versions as it’s a very small download package (around 200Mb instead of many gigabytes of the ‘full’ versions) and the sounds and articulations that are provided are generally all that the average student composer will need. It is not bloated with features you might only use 2% of the time, everything provided is easily accessible and thoroughly useful.

One of the things I love most about this sample library is that Spitfire Audio are supporting it with an amazing page of resources.  When you get a sample library, it can take forever to setup an orchestral template so that it’s actually usable. There are some kind people that share their templates on forums, and websites like Babylon Waves have sprung up with useful articulation files for Logic Pro and other DAW’s that make these overwhelming sample libraries usable.

So it is especially great that Spitfire Audio have created a page of resources that include freely downloadable templates, as well as orchestration tutorial videos to help your students get the most out of the sample library.

It is especially great that The Page contains the DAW sessions used in the videos like the one above are also available for download.

What makes a sample library replicate the real sound of an orchestra is by providing a variety of articulations. The Celli samples (for example) provide four articulations: long, spiccato, pizzicato and tremolo. For the majority of student composers this will provide all the articulations they are likely to need. I know I can’t complain (because the software is essentially free), but I would have loved to have seen legato articulations provided as the ‘long’ articulation can feel a bit clunky when trying to move smoothly between notes. You can overcome this somewhat by overlapping the MIDI notes in your DAW’s piano roll, but they won’t sound as effective as proper legato patches.

You really shouldn’t waste anymore time reading this blog! Head to Spitfireaudio.com and either purchase this or apply for a free download. This really is the best free orchestral sample library available and is a must have for any composers that wish to use orchestral instruments in their compositions or songs.